This invention relates to a container and cooperating container closure having two modes of operation including a child-resistant mode in which the closure is rendered difficult to remove from the container and a conventional mode in which the closure is relatively easy to remove from the container.
Various safety closures for containers are presently in use to prevent children from unauthorized access to potentially dangerous substances such as pills in a pill container. Not all users of pill bottles, however, have children and therefore not all users require child-resistant safety closures. Many of the more common safety closures can be difficult to remove by persons of limited dexterity and strength, such as elderly or infirm persons. To these people, child-resistant safety closures can be frustrating, as they often do not have the strength and dexterity required to operate a child-resistant safety closure.
The manufacturers of potentially dangerous substances seem to have an increasing desire to provide child-resistant closures on nearly every container of such substances, yet often the persons to whom such substances are sold are the elderly or infirm. Thus, the elderly or infirm seem to be unable to escape the widespread use of child-resistant closures.
The present invention attempts to serve the elderly, infirm and those with children by providing a single closure having two modes of operation. In the first mode, the closure is used as a conventional screw-type or snap-on closure and in the second mode the closure is used as a child-resistant closure. Either mode can be selected independently of the other by the user and neither mode requires any complicated special instructions for pushing, pulling or squeezing the closure or container as so many of the conventional child-resistant closures do.